fiftyfour fiftyfour

You've totally missed the point then. If the operator was run as a not-for-profit by a collective of workers (under the overall umbrella of an arms-length company created by a trade union) you'd never, ever have a strike and other key indicators like sickness and staff turnover would be exponentially better. The collective/co-operative could employ its own management team based on their ability and with a genuine financial incentive in the success of the company rather than being on the management-go-round conveyor belt of people who foul up somewhere and then move onto the next company. It was tried with considerable success by some of the privatised bus companies back in the day (the largest was Yorkshire Rider) but their model was to make all the staff shareholders and ultimately they took the bag of silver dangled by a large plc and sold out to them. Trouble is that it's all too "non-tory" for the current government to contemplate or for those who have spent the last 42 years living under right of centre governments to begin to understand.

Yes, I should have replied earlier as I fell into the trap of being quick to complain when something goes wrong and slow to say when something has been done well. Steve has created a very useful new pack C4708 which gives you three "INTERCITY" wordings for swallow livery and you choose your own number, which the pack suggests must start with 47 but he did numbers that started with 43 just as happily when I ordered. This means that we can replicate the best livery ever to grace our rails once again when combined with Shawplan etched swallow birds as the old pack 1540 with its reflective birds hit production snags, and the cast birds are right for all but a couple of Class 43's post 1991 anyway. Along with other items ordered at the same time I've cleared the backlog on the area beyond the workbench, and got a pair of IC Swallow power cars without paying £550 (start price on a Hornby pair listed on eBay yesterday)!!

Am I missing something or how would turning the loco around ever mitigate against cracks on an underslung module?! I'm wondering why the TPE ones are still in traffic if this is a known issue now...

No it's not, it's highly pertinent. The industry has just come through a very costly pandemic under a government who wanted to trim rail spending BEFORE the arrival of covid and now want to slash it. Who pays for this fiasco is central to a lot of supplier/customer relationships right across the industry.

The modern day punter moans like crazy if they can't reach a plug socket or the WiFi isn't perfect- giving them non air-con, non heated, sprung suspension pre mid 1970's relics and they'd probably rather not travel...

Are the XC Voyagers not limited to 100mph Westerleigh Jcn-Bristol PW by physics anyway? Coming off the curve at Westerleigh assuming its still 30mph you'd have to really give it the gun and then be ready to use a lot of brake to stop at Bristol PW to top the ton between the two! They used to be allowed into Padd, probably still are but subject to restrictions on speed. The only reason the Network Measurement Train power cars are fitted with ATP (fact fans- they are the only non GWR stock to have received the GWML version of ATP) is to allow them to run full speed on those lines.

Not quite, they modified the HST fleet in 2006-2008 on GWR so they were all fitted with selective door opening, so since then any short platforms served both old with grandfather (Cotswold line, Stonehouse) and new, no rights (Ashchurch, Ivybridge) would only have had doors actually platformed released.

and all for the want of less than half a mile of electification. If they had done Acton Wells Jcn to Acton East Jcn as part of the CrossRail work they would have been able to swap units around between the two halves without the tunnel being open, been able to shift the 387's from GWR land to Ilford and back without the use of a diesel loco for any work they need that's outside the scope of Reading, and possibly had some freight or open access benefit as well....

a comment has been made about the nameplates, apparently Eversholt forgot to take them off and have now lost them- if SIMS are tipped off they can make a few quid profit on those!

For those that remember, we knocked on the door of a fleetwide stop of the HSTs as late as '95. Thankfully inspections over pits didn't find a fleetwide issue with the retaining bolts on the #3 fuel tanks and 43190's disaster at Maidenhead was a one-off...

Whisper it quietly (because they are so awful to travel on) but the Voyagers are reliable, and super reliable if you don't ask too much of them like tilting or joining/splitting with sister units too often. Ironically the covid timetable could be tweaked to provide even greater capacity as most turns are double sets (or HSTs), it's just a shame that every other hour they don't go south of Bristol in the daytime...

and there wasn't a massive amount of choice for off the peg bi-mode, 125mph units. Still isn't! Massive digression (please forgive) but Alstom missed a trick when they built the 4 extra WCML Pendos; they should have built a 5th one with a large diesel engine between the cab and the passenger area in each driving car and tried flogging it as a bi-mode with UK acceptance, albeit with C4 restriction and lardy-arse carriages...

Bus drivers would generally get a familarisation on new types, but that may be limited to just showing them where the controls are and how they differ to other types. Difference on the railway is that a Class 800 is 45 years newer in design vs a HST and so is radically different to the extent of training pretty much from scratch traction-wise.

We don't do shades of grey, period. And there are not dozens of pilotmen/women sat around on call today just in case you want to run something over a route where it now normally does not run. And you are getting confused about GWR- there are three (now four actually, but I will simplify for my audience) "groups" of staff- HSS, LTV and West (and former HeX) and each only holds competency on their own routes and their own tractions. For HSS that means Class 800 only apart from a few that do Class 57's, for LTV that means Class 800, Class 387 and 165/166, for West that means HST, Class 15x and 165/166. There are very few "crossover" staff, some West of England depots do a bit of everything but they are busy, err, doing a bit of everything. You could possibly cape the Gunnislake branch to run a Paddington service with a HST if they had been passed to run to Paddington as sliding door sets but the benefit would be negligible.

You just don't get it. Slam door HSTs were the norm back in 2005 or whenever it was that 222103 got dropped. You keep ranting on about filing cabinets, and you quoted something like "sat with their feet up citing the rule book" after a list that laughably included green godesses. Staff could be retrained on older stock, vehicles could be brought back out of storage and given exams or overhauls they need to get them back in service, dispensations could be granted for non PRM stock to be brought back to cover the shortfall. They are long term solutions, not overnight ones. You (and it's not just you) seem to think that drivers and guards working for GWR can just change back into their old uniforms and regain the traction competencies they held back then- it doesn't work like that. When the HSTs were introduced on Hull Trains (for example) that was after weeks of training had been carried out and using stock that was then common on the route and thus they had station staff competent in their dispatch and didn't need a PRM exemption.

Just about possible to do a "two halves" service divided at Didcot, there are some "West" crews that sign as far as Didcot so in theory could work Cattle Class HST from the West/South Wales/Bristol to there with passengers forward on a 387. I did ask and Class 387s are not allowed west of Didcot in passenger service as that stretch is not approved for DOO operation, and no guards exist that sign 387's. The most workable solution is probably to concentrate the "passed as OK" Class 800's on an hourly Reading-Bristol, hourly Reading-Cardiff and hourly Reading-Exeter on the basis that Class 345's (of which there are 20+ spare per day) and Class 387's can do Reading-Paddington, and west of Exeter/west of Cardiff there are other TOCs and/or other tractions which can probably deal with the current loadings. Probably best to send all the Oxford passengers to Marylebone, or get them to change at Reading into XC.

I suggest you re-read what "Hobby" wrote as they put it far better than I could. The railway defines standards, they are enshrined in law and very strictly enforced by HMRI and other authorities. The staff involved are not being deliberately obstructive, they are following what they are told to do. Staff in every safety critical role everywhere on the railway are trained in what they do, and we don't cut corners or bluff our way into delivering a safe service with an "it'll be OK" attitude. The modern railway requires a modern approach, and that includes managing the liability towards our passengers and colleagues and ensuring every bit of paperwork is done before any task is carried out. You expect some kind of blitz spirit where we just string together a few old trains out of scrapyards and get on with the job- the gulf between what you think is possible and what is actually possible is immeasurable.

What doesn't help the WoE to London cause this weekend is an Axminster to Exeter block on the South Western. GWR says come back next week, maybe.

In your fantasy universe how many crews do you think are sat around waiting for a call, where is the second LSL HST anyway, how does that comply with PRM regulations, who is going to be the guard on that, who is going to dispatch it from stations since LNER competency to dispatch slam doors is now confined to Wakefield and Doncaster only, how are you going to get the actual LSL set or your imaginary second LSL set onto the ECML to start with. So only about five reasons why item 1 couldn't happen, I'm not even going to bother going through the rest.

Can't we just agree they were built to a price, like anything else, and now they have found to be unfit for purpose- a purpose that would have been defined to the nth degree in the procurement document. How good the DfT deal was with Agility will be tested after this weekend, does Hitachi owe the rail industry an eight figure sum in compensation for the shortfall in trains today, tomorrow and however long it takes or does the DfT just have to swallow the cost on top of the billions they are already pouring into the industry?

Very, very rarely the coolant level- usually the fan oil had run low or so thin it was ineffective through overwork, it was a flaw in the HST design that cooling capacity often struggled to cope with the amount of engine heat. In answer to an earlier other posting that claimed the anoraks "loved the HST"- that is about as far from the truth as its possible to get. When HSTs came in introducing 125mph, air-con comfort to the GWML they were hated by time-warp idiots who thought that 90mph steam heat stock should prevail - it was the ordinary paying passenger that loved the HST for several reasons. And in answer to a different earlier posting writing today's news off as overblown spotter wibble- I'd say the near total withdrawal of around 50% of this countries "Inter City" services is pretty big news, and when both main companies affected are delivering a "don't travel, not today and not tomorrow either" message the damage to the wider industry is immeasurable and at a time when commuter traffic is near zero and discretionary leisure travel was probably the only thing that would have kept the industry going.

and the TGS wants the buffers left on at the van end...

I fear there may still be some comment made officially about the ongoing use of 45 year old stock with its 1970's crash worthiness and/or the wisdom of having a lot of weight at the back of a train and the effect that has on the coaches when in a collision like this. Ufton Nurvet was an unfortunate one, if it had struck the car any differently and if there hadn't been the start of a loop just after the crossing that train would probably have been derailed but stayed upright and aligned. Proves that sometimes all you need is an element of bad luck, same went for Great Heck which would have had a different outcome if it hadn't been for the freight on the down.

You may be patient and not mind how long it takes (Totton to New Milton at 20mph is probably going to stick an hour on the journey and by necessity cut the service by at last half due to crew and stock displacement) but how frequently is it windy, or at least windy enough for there to be some risk that a tree has fallen? We cannot have zero risk, and the fact that Carmont is the first weather related fatal accident in decades suggests the level of aversion to risk had been about right. And I still stand by my point; your train arrives at Southampton and they decide that it's not going any further because its been a bit windy and eventually direct you onto replacement road transport which do YOU think poses the largest risk to your safety, the train running at line speed or the bus running along the A31 at 60mph?

But it was still the middle of August on a railway that is resilient to all weathers. It appears you are advocating blanket closure or effective closure of the railway network after heavy rainfall (or indeed after any weather incident including wind or snow), which would certainly reduce the risk to railway staff and passengers. My point is that by making the railway that fickle will force passengers to use other less safe modes.